F0 Target Research Articles

Phonetic Effects of Tonal Crowding in Persian Polar Questions.

Persian polar questions are characterized by a rise-fall followed by a low F0 plateau and a final rise. A production experiment was designed which systematically manipulated question length and the position of stress in the nuclear accented word in the question. Results revealed that distances between tones can strongly affect their scaling and alignment in predictable manner. With respect to scaling, our data show that the postnuclear low F0 target is realized considerably higher in short questions in which tonal crowding is more acute. This scaling adjustment of the L affects the following H tone, such that the final H is realized higher in tonal space, relative to the other crowding contexts. The results for duration show that in short questions, syllable duration is significantly lengthened so that there is room for tonal targets to be realized. In addition, the alignment data in this study suggest that crowding contexts incrementally affect the temporal adjustment of tonal targets. In some circumstances, tonal crowding results in anticipatory retraction of tones, while in others it results in carry-over tonal displacement depending on the direction of the prosodic pressure. These results can best be explained in an auto-segmental approach to intonational phonology in which intonation contours are treated as strings of distinct high and low tones associated with specific elements in the segmental string.

Disentangling word stress and phrasal prosody: A view from Georgian

This paper investigates the interaction of word stress and phrasal prosody in Georgian by studying the distribution of acoustic cues (duration, intensity, F0) in controlled data. The results show that initial syllables in Georgian words are marked by greater duration than all subsequent syllables, regardless of syllable count and phrasal context. After excluding domain-initial strengthening as an alternative explanation, this finding provides evidence in favor of fixed initial stress. Likewise, initial syllables are marked by greatest intensity, but the consistent gradual drop in intensity throughout the word suggests that this effect may not be stress-related. The F0 results align with the existing accounts: individual lexical words form ACCENTUAL PHRASES, marked by a low pitch accent on the initial syllable and a high final boundary tone on the final syllable. Additionally, new evidence for a phrasal accent, aligned with the penult, is presented. F0 targets are shown to be completely absent in the context of post-focal deaccenting, which shows that F0-marking in Georgian is reserved for phrasal prosody and is not intrinsic to stress-marking. These results help account for the facts related to word stress, phrasal intonation, and their interplay in Georgian, the object of debate in the literature.

Responses to time pressure on phrase-final melodies in varieties of Dutch and West Frisian

In order to investigate the effect of time pressure on the execution of falling and falling-rising pitch movements on phrase-final syllables, we ran a production experiment with 119 speakers distributed over five regional varieties of West-Germanic spoken in the Netherlands and Standard Dutch. They realized nuclear Falls and Fall-Rises on four IP-final monosyllabic target words in which the duration of the sonorant portion of the syllable rhyme was varied by combining a short and a long vowel with a sonorant and obstruent coda consonant. The different contours were elicited with the help of a ‘Statement’ dialogue and a ‘Rhetorical question’ dialogue, respectively. Phonetic adjustments fell into three categories, target undershoot, increased f0 slopes, and durational easing, the latter either by f0 target retraction or sonorant rhyme lengthening. Talkers produced monosyllabic Fall-Rises quite generally, although avoidance in favour of a plain rising contour was evident in one-fifth of the cases of the shortest sonorant rhyme in the more prestigious varieties. Broadly, southwestern Zeelandic Dutch and northeastern Low Saxon differed most noticeably from each other in their treatment of the valley of the Fall-Rise, which Zeelandic maximally undershot and Low Saxon faithfully preserved. Urban Hollandic and Standard Dutch were similar, while West Frisian shares some features with Hollandic and some with Low Saxon.Apart from these effects of geographic contiguity, the data argue for an interpretation of the various measures alleviating time pressure within the more general conception of speech as a compromise between the interests of the speaker and those of the hearer in the process of speech communication.

Evidence for F0 preplanning with delayed stimuli

A sentence production experiment was conducted to investigate F0 preplanning, specifically examining whether speakers plan pitch targets according to utterance length and whether preplanning limits dynamic control of pitch range. The experiment used a novel elicitation method in which visual stimuli that cue part of the utterance are delayed so that participants initiate the utterance without knowledge of its length. Participants read sentences in which the subject noun phrase was composed of one, two, or three conjoined noun phrases with controlled lexical and phonological content (e.g. Eight red weasels and nine green rhinos and eight blue llamas live in the zoo). On half of the trials with two and three noun phrases, the presentation of the visual stimuli that cued non-initial phrases (e.g., nine green rhinos and eight blue llamas) was delayed until after detection of utterance initiation. The effects of length and delay on F0 measures were analyzed. The results showed the length effect; the utterance-initial F0 peak was highest when three phrases were presented initially and lowest when one phrase was presented initially. Moreover, the utterance-initial peak in delayed stimuli was similar to that of the single phrase stimuli. In non-initial phrases, the pitch range of the delayed stimuli was constrained such that the F0 peak of the stimuli without delay was higher than those with delay. The findings suggest that speakers plan F0 targets and range before production, and such planning restricts subsequent control of F0.

Phonetics of White Hmong vowel and tonal contrasts

Hmong languages, particularly White Hmong, are well studied for their complex tone systems that incorporate pitch, phonation, and duration differences. Still, prior work has made use mostly of tones elicited in their citation forms in carrier phrases. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of both the vowel and tone systems of White Hmong from recordings of read speech. We confirm several features of the language, including the presence of nasal vowels (rather than derived nasalized vowels through coarticulation with a coda [ŋ]), the description of certain tone contours, and the systematic presence of breathy and creaky voice on two of the tones. We also find little evidence of additional intonational f0 targets. However, we show that some tones vary greatly by their position in utterance, and propose novel descriptions for several of them. Finally, we show that $\textrm{H}1^{\!*}$ –H2*, a widely used measure of voice quality and phonation in Hmong and across languages, does not adequately distinguish modal from non-modal phonation in this data set, and argue that noise measures like Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) are more robust to phonation differences in corpora with more variability.

A comparative study of fundamental frequency stability between speech and singing

Speaking and singing are mechanisms of vocal production that have distinct articulatory properties and consequently produce sounds that are normally perceived as different. Several papers indicate that the tonal stability characteristic in singing associated with pre-defined fundamental frequency (f0) target tones, i.e., musical notes, is an important differentiating factor relatively to the observed non-predefined f0 target tones with greater f0 variability in speech. However, they are mainly grounded on perceptual experiments and little has been done to demonstrate this difference in terms of acoustic measurements. The aim of this paper is to compare measures of f0 variability between singing and speech to test the hypothesis that singing has lower f0 variability, as it would be expected according with the higher tonal stability in singing. In order to perform this comparison, we built a database with parallel singing and speech recordings. In a first experiment, these two signals were compared using the common statistical measures of f0 variability during linguistic units (syllable and phone), which have been used before in other works, specifically based on f0 variance. Although the results were not conclusive about the hypothesis, a more detailed analysis performed in this first experiment allowed us to find characteristic f0 effects in both speech and singing data that should be taken into account in our subsequent study of f0 stability. Thus, another experiment was conducted with the same recorded data but using a different statistical analysis of f0 variance to take into account these factors. In contrast with the first experiment, the results confirmed the hypothesis of higher f0 stability in singing. The final experiment in this work consisted of using a deep neural network classifier to test if speech and singing can be differentiated directly from the f0 values measured at syllable level, without using statistical measures. The results are consistent with the positive results of the second experiment. The findings of this research are important to better understand the acoustic properties of intonation that permit to distinguish spoken from sung sounds. It also provides cues to derive suitable f0 models for applications depending on the modalities used, such as synthesis or transformation of speech/singing signals.

A quantitative analysis of tone sandhi in Standard Mandarin and Nanjing Mandarin based on surface pitch contours and underlying pitch targets

Abstract Two statistical modelling methods are first used to quantify the third tone sandhi in Standard Mandarin in which the first falling-rising T3 becomes a rising T2 in the T3 + T3 disyllabic context. Growth curve analysis suggests non-neutralization of the surface F0 contours of the sandhi tone and its corresponding citation tone (T2), whereas a quantitative F0 target approximation model reveals neutralization of their underlying pitch targets, congruent with the stable and categorical tone shift properties of tone sandhi processes. The same statistical procedure is successfully extended to examine tone sandhi rules in Nanjing Mandarin. Our analysis leads to a proposal to change tonal values based on the Chao’s number system of some Nanjing Mandarin monosyllabic tones. The transformation method from acoustic data to Chao’s number applies well to our data and proves superior to those previously described in the literature.

Stability and Variability in Slovak Prosodic Boundaries

Background/Aim: Encoding intended meanings in the type and strength of prosodic boundaries and strategies for communicating these meanings in ambient noise use similar prosodic cues. We analyze how increasing the level of ambient noise affects the realization of Slovak prosodic boundaries. Methods: Five native speakers of Slovak read sentences, manipulating the boundary type (weak, rise, fall) and the location of pre-boundary pitch accent. Ambient noise of several levels was administered via headphones. Acoustic and articulatory data (electromagnetometry) were collected. Results: Under normal condition, boundary strength is signaled with longer pre-boundary rhymes, more frequent pauses, greater crossboundary f0 resets and jaw displacement. The strength of falls is realized in crossboundary features (pauses, f0 reset), and rises in pre-boundary features (rhyme duration, f0 range). Pitch-accented rhymes are strengthened in all features, but f0 range. In noise, the increase in boundary strength is weak, and falls strengthen more than rises. F0 targets for falls and rises are adjusted in addition to noiseinduced global f0 scaling and lengthening. Conclusion: Hyper-articulation of prosodic boundaries in ambient noise is not robust and uniform; rather, durational, f0 and jaw displacement features co-create complex prosodic patterns in a complementary and synergetic manner based on affordances in normal speech.

The prosodic expression of focus, contrast and givenness: A production study of Hungarian

This paper reports the results of a production experiment that explores the prosodic realization of focus in Hungarian, a language that is characterized by obligatory syntactic focus marking. Our study investigates narrow focus in sentences in which focus is unambiguously marked by syntactic means, comparing it to broad focus sentences. Potential independent effects of the salience (textual givenness) of the background of the narrow focus and the contrastiveness of the focus are controlled for and are also examined.The results show that both continuous phonetic measures and categorical factors such as the distribution of contour types are affected by the focus-related factors, despite the presence of syntactic focus marking. The phonetic effects found are mostly parallel to those of typical prosodic focus marking languages like English. The prosodic prominence required of focus is realized through changes to the scaling and slope of F0 targets and contours. The asymmetric prominence relation between the focus and the background can be expressed not only by the phonetic marking of the prominence of the focused element, but also by the phonetic marking of the reduced prominence of the background. Furthermore, contrastiveness of focus and (textual) givenness of the background show independent phonetic effects, both of them affecting the realization of the background. These results are argued to shed light on alternative approaches to the information structural notion of contrastive focus and the relation between the notions of focus and givenness.

The phonetic realization of focus in West Frisian, Low Saxon, High German, and three varieties of Dutch

This study examines the effects of different kinds of focus and of focus constituent size on the phonetic realization of accent peaks in declarative sentences in varieties of continental West Germanic. Speakers were drawn from six populations along the coastal line of the Netherlands, covering Zeelandic Dutch, Hollandic Dutch, West Frisian, Dutch Low Saxon, German Low Saxon, and Northern High German. Our findings suggest that focus structure has systematic effects on segmental durations, the scaling and timing of the accentual f0 gesture, and on the alignment of f0 targets relative to the beginning of the accented syllable. However, the difference between neutral focus and corrective focus has more systematic effects than variation of the size of the focused constituents in corrective focus. In addition, speakers from different places were found to adopt different strategies in signaling these focus structures. Speakers of Hollandic Dutch and West Frisian expanded the pitch span on the accented word, whereas speakers of Low and High German rescaled single targets of the accentual f0 gesture, and speakers of Zeelandic Dutch mixed both strategies.

Effects of prosodic position on the production of Si-Xien Hakka tones at phrase level

This study examined the effects of prosodic position on duration and F0 of the six tones in Si-Xien Hakka. Each of the tones was placed in the initial, medial, and final positions of a three-syllable phrase/clause, which constituted the first part of a sentence with the [δδδ, δδδ] structure. The results showed that F0 lowering and lengthening were found at domain final position. The final lengthening allowed the offset of the low-rising tones to reach a higher F0 target, not attainable by those in other prosodic positions. Also in this final position the high level tones exhibited a real flap shape due to the greater coarticulation resistance caused by the following boundary breaks. Furthermore, the F0 decreasing rate of the falling tones was found to vary according to domain position: the F0 descended the fastest at domain medial position and the slowest at final position, except for the high checked tones, which showed the same rate at domain-initial and –final positions. This reveals that the vibration of the vocal folds, reflected by the F0 decreasing rate, started from the initial position, gradually speeded up to the highest rate at medial position and then slowed down till the pre-boundary domain-final one.

On the Prosodic Expression of Pragmatic Prominence: The Case of Pitch Register Lowering in Akan

This article presents data from three production experiments investigating the prosodic means of encoding information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo family, spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put target words either in wide, informational, or corrective focus, or in one of the experiments also in pre-focal or post-focal position rendering it as given. The prosodic parameters F0 and duration were measured on the target words. Duration is not consistently affected by information structure, but contrary to the prediction that High (H) and Low (L) tones are raised in ex situ (fronted) focus constructions we found a significantly lower realization of both H and L tones under corrective focus in ex situ and in situ focus constructions. Givenness does not seem to be marked prosodically. The data suggest that pragmatic prominence is expressed prosodically by means of a deviation from an unmarked prosodic structure. Results are thus contradicting the view of the effort code that predicts a positive correlation of more effort resulting in higher F0 targets.

Acoustic evidence for protracted development of monosyllabic Mandarin tone production by Taiwanese children

The current study examines the acoustic characteristics of monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 3-y-old children growing up in Taiwan. Four hundred monosyllabic tone productions were collected from 11 adults and 10 children and were judged by 5 Mandarin-speaking adults to determine tone accuracy. Seven acoustic parameters strongly associated with Mandarin tone perception were measured in these productions and compared among children's and adults correct and incorrect productions. The findings indicate that children do not produce the high level tone with fundamental frequencies (f0) as high or level as adults. Children's rising, falling, and dipping tones do not reach f0 ranges as low as adults. These results are largely consistent with the findings in our previous acoustic study on the monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 3-y-old children growing up in the U.S. Taken together, 3-y-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in the U.S. and Taiwan do not produce adult-like monosyllabic Mandarin tones. Even children's productions in which the tonal targets are correctly perceived by adults are acoustically different than the adult forms. Children demonstrate more difficulties producing low f0 targets. The findings provide acoustic evidence to support a much more protracted process for Mandarin lexical tone acquisition than most studies have suggested.

Effects of fundamental frequency and vocal-tract length cues on sentence segregation by listeners with hearing loss

The purpose was to determine the effect of hearing loss on the ability to separate competing talkers using talker differences in fundamental frequency (F0) and apparent vocal-tract length (VTL). Performance of 13 adults with hearing loss and 6 adults with normal hearing was measured using the Coordinate Response Measure. For listeners with hearing loss, the speech was amplified and filtered according to the NAL-RP hearing aid prescription. Target-to-competition ratios varied from 0 to 9 dB. The target sentence was randomly assigned to the higher or lower values of F0 or VTL on each trial. Performance improved for F0 differences up to 9 and 6 semitones for people with normal hearing and hearing loss, respectively, but only when the target talker had the higher F0. Recognition for the lower F0 target improved when trial-to-trial uncertainty was removed (9-semitone condition). Scores improved with increasing differences in VTL for the normal-hearing group. On average, hearing-impaired listeners did not benefit from VTL cues, but substantial inter-subject variability was observed. The amount of benefit from VTL cues was related to the average hearing loss in the 1-3-kHz region when the target talker had the shorter VTL.

On the timing of the final rise in Dutch falling–rising intonation contours

A corpus of Dutch falling–rising intonation contours with early nuclear accent was elicited from nine speakers with a view to establishing the extent to which the low F0 target immediately preceding the final rise, was attracted by a post-nuclear stressed syllable (PNS) in either of the last two words or by Second Occurrence Contrastive Focus (SOCF) on either of these words. We found a small effect of foot type, which we interpret as due to a rhythmic 'trochaic enhancement' effect. The results show that neither PNS nor SOCF influences the location of the low F0 target, which appears consistently to be timed with reference to the utterance end. It is speculated that there are two ways in which postnuclear tones can be timed. The first is by means of a phonological association with a post-nuclear stressed syllable, as in Athenian Greek and Roermond Dutch. The second is by a fixed distance from the utterance end or from the target of an adjacent tone. Accordingly, two phonological mechanisms are defended, association and edge alignment, such that all tones edge-align, but only some associate. Specifically, no evidence was found for a third situation that can be envisaged, in which a post-nuclear tone is gradiently attracted to a post-nuclear stress.

The segmental anchoring hypothesis revisited: Syllable structure and speech rate effects on peak timing in Spanish

This paper addresses the validity of the segmental anchoring hypothesis for tonal landmarks (henceforth, SAH) as described in recent work by (among others) Ladd, Faulkner, D., Faulkner, H., & Schepman [1999. Constant ‘segmental’ anchoring of f0 movements under changes in speech rate. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106, 1543–1554], Ladd [2003. Phonological conditioning of f0 target alignment. In: M. J. Solé, D. Recasens, & J. Romero (Eds.), Proceedings of the XVth international congress of phonetic sciences, Vol. 1, (pp. 249–252). Barcelona: Causal Productions; in press. Segmental anchoring of pitch movements: Autosegmental association or gestural coordination? Italian Journal of Linguistics, 18 (1)]. The alignment of LH* prenuclear peaks with segmental landmarks in controlled speech materials in Peninsular Spanish is analyzed as a function of syllable structure type (open, closed) of the accented syllable, segmental composition, and speaking rate. Contrary to the predictions of the SAH, alignment was affected by syllable structure and speech rate in significant and consistent ways. In: CV syllables the peak was located around the end of the accented vowel, and in CVC syllables around the beginning-mid part of the sonorant coda, but still far from the syllable boundary. With respect to the effects of rate, peaks were located earlier in the syllable as speech rate decreased. The results suggest that the accent gestures under study are synchronized with the syllable unit. In general, the longer the syllable, the longer the rise time. Thus the fundamental idea of the anchoring hypothesis can be taken as still valid. On the other hand, the tonal alignment patterns reported here can be interpreted as the outcome of distinct modes of gestural coordination in syllable-initial vs. syllable-final position: gestures at syllable onsets appear to be more tightly coordinated than gestures at the end of syllables [Browman, C. P., & Goldstein, L.M. (1986). Towards an articulatory phonology. Phonology Yearbook, 3, 219–252; Browman, C. P., & Goldstein, L. (1988). Some notes on syllable structure in articulatory phonology. Phonetica, 45, 140–155; (1992). Articulatory Phonology: An overview. Phonetica, 49, 155–180; Krakow (1999). Physiological organization of syllables: A review. Journal of Phonetics, 27, 23–54; among others]. Intergestural timing can thus provide a unifying explanation for (1) the contrasting behavior between the precise synchronization of L valleys with the onset of the syllable and the more variable timing of the end of the f0 rise, and, more specifically, for (2) the right-hand tonal pressure effects and ‘undershoot’ patterns displayed by peaks at the ends of syllables and other prosodic domains.

Intonational distinctions between sentence types in North Kyungsang Korean

As a lexical pitch accent language, North Kyungsang Korean seems to display a very restricted distribution of intonation. This paper investigates intonational differences between statements and questions in North Kyungsang Korean. In particular, a variety of f0 targets are compared between the sentence types, including pitch accent f0 peak, utterance‐final edge, pitch range, and f0 valleys. Besides the acoustic analyses, perceptual identification tests are performed to test whether apparently diverging acoustic cues are perceptually significant. Based on ANOVA tests, it turns out that NK Korean questions can be significantly different from statements with respect to the utterance‐final edge f0 and the relative f0 and timing of the rightmost f0 valley. Specifically, questions have higher f0 values at the right edge and higher and earlier occurrences of the rightmost f0 valley. Further, the forced‐choice identification tests, whose input materials are manipulated in the similar set of acoustic variables, sh...

Effect of fundamental frequency perturbations on medial stop-consonant [voice] judgments

Previous research has suggested that the direction of short-duration fundamental frequency (F0) perturbations following consonants provides a cue to consonant [voice] status. More recently, Silverman [Phonetica 43, 76–91 (1986)] proposed that the [voice] cue is provided by the direction and extent of F0 perturbations relative to the underlying intonational contour. A competing view, the low-frequency hypothesis, suggests that F0 participates in a more general way whereby any low-frequency energy in the region of the consonant will contribute to the perception of a [+ voice] consonant. In this study, 15 speech stimulus series, each ranging perceptually from /aga/ to /aka/, were synthesized by varying VOT from 10 to 45 ms in 5 ms steps. Fifteen different pitch contours were generated by designating F0 targets at three points in the stimulus: initial vowel, onset of voicing energy after closure, and 100 ms after the onset of voicing. Three F0 values were used, arranged into two pairs: 100 and 120 Hz and 120 and 140 Hz. The results indicated that the value of F0 at vowel onset, rather than the relative movement of F0, is the best predictor of subjects’ judgments of consonant [voice] status. [Work supported by NIDCD.]

On the temporal alignment of F0 with segmental structure

Timing and F0 tend to be correlated in speech. For example, a syllable near the end of a phrase will be lengthened, and if it bears a local F0 maximum (a high pitch accent), then the peak will occur earlier in that syllable. The more the lengthening, the earlier the accent peak. However, the current experiment shows a case where F0 peaks are aligned earlier in their syllables without the expected concomitant lengthening. Two speakers recorded My _____ lives in Memphis, where the second word was Ma, Mom, Mama, Pa, Pop, or Papa, both with and without a low F0 target (corresponding to an utterance‐internal prosodic boundary) after the second word. Acoustic measurements, combined with perceptual judgments, show that the low tone pushes the preceding pitch accent about 50% earlier in its syllable, with little or no lengthening of that syllable. Thus peak alignment depends on upcoming tonal events, as well as those utterance features that determine durational structure.

Determination of a process time for a new product: canned low acid artichoke hearts

SummaryIn order to obtain a process time for canned low acid artichoke hearts, the heat resistance of Clostridium sporogenes PA 3679 in phosphate buffer (pH 7) and in artichoke puree (pH 5.2) was determined in the range of 100–118°C. DT values in artichoke puree were determined by the most probable number and plate count methods. D121°C values were deduced by extrapolation of the curves. An F 8.3/121 (see nomenclature section) target value of 1.8 min, equivalent to an F0= 2.5 min, was established considering a D121°C value of 0.36 min for artichoke puree. The cold point for canned artichoke hearts in 1/2 kg (71.5x117 mm) cans was determined, a set of heat penetration and cooling curves were obtained and the values of the parameters ‘j’ and ‘f’ were found. A process time was deduced, 21.5 and 23 min of heating at 121°C, following the methods of Patashnik (1954) and Hayakawa (1970, 1974) respectively, in order to reach the F0 target of 2.5 min for this new canned food. This process was adequate, as the inoculated experimental pack test showed no altered cans out of 50 inoculated after 21.5 min of heating at 121°C.